COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND NAZIS, REDUX – BY TOM CURLEY

I’m writing this on Saturday August 12, 2017. I only mention this because I’ve noticed that many of the blogs I’ve written since November 8th 2016 about the “Orange Fuehrer” (yup, I’m going there) which I thought were specific to that week or day, have become “evergreen”. By that I mean if it’s re-posted six months later, it still seems like I wrote it yesterday. Today may be different. But somehow, I doubt it.

Cognitive dissonance is defined as one mind simultaneously holding two or more conflicting beliefs, ideas or values.

I experienced a variation of that today. Ellin, my daughter Sarah and I went to see the movie “Dunkirk” this afternoon.

It’s a very good movie. It documents the reality of what 400,000 English troops experienced for a week. They were trapped by German forces at the beach of Dunkirk. The Germans, no excuse me, to be more specific, THE NAZIS, chose to send the Luftwaffe to bomb and shoot them like fish in a barrel.

They bombed RED CROSS HOSPITAL SHIPS FILLED WITH WOUNDED SOLDIERS! NAZI U-Boats sank every ship they could find overloaded with troops. What eventually saved the English troops were hundreds and hundreds of private citizens. These people owned small fishing boats, small pleasure boats, any kind of boat, and sailed them across the English Channel, risking their lives to rescue British troops.

Churchill hoped to save 30,000 troops. Out of 400,000. The boats that went over rescued over 350,000. They had no guns. The troops only had rifles to fight back against U-Boats and dive bombers. Dunkirk was both one of the worst moments for the allies and the best moments for the allies. When the troops reached England, there was a volunteer who was handing out blankets to the soldiers. He told each one “Well done.”

One of the soldiers replied. “All we did was survive.” The man replied “Sometimes, that’s enough.” The NAZIS went on to do more horrific things before the war was over.

My point is. The Nazis were the bad guys. I mean, really REALLY BAD GUYS. It’s rare in human history to have really, really bad guys with no redeeming qualities. The best thing you could say about Hitler was that he was nice to his dog. And we sort of need really good bad guys. After the Nazis died out, we briefly had the Klingons.

They were really bad guys. Until Star Trek Next Generation where they became not so bad guys.

But Nazis? They have ALWAYS BEEN REALLY, REALLY BAD GUYS. Hell, in German schools, from grade school on up, they are upfront with their history. They make sure every German is aware of exactly what happened in WWII to make sure that it never happens again.

At least, in Germany. I bring all of this up because when I came home from watching Dunkirk, I started watching the news. White nationalists, waving NAZI flags and Confederate flags, were rioting in Charlottesville at what they called a “Unite the Right” rally. A NAZI, drove a car into a group of counter-protesters, killing one and wounding 19 others. These were not Germans. White men, born here.

I cannot call them Americans. Their leaders claim that “they are fulfilling the promises of Donald J. Trump. They are taking back America.”

They led a nighttime rally reminiscent of Hitler’s rallies of the 1930’s. But they did it in polo shirts and with TIKI torches! TIKI torches! Are you kidding me??? I went to a Luau clam bake and a KKK rally broke out!

The Governor of Virginia gave a stirring speech saying that these NAZISwere not welcome in Virginia. They were not welcome in America. He is right.

What did our Asshole-In-Chief say? He said a lot of people are to blame — but never mentioned …. THE FUCKING NAZIS!!!!!

Here’s the dissonance.

We fought a war against these assholes. My dad and his generation served and died fighting against these assholes. For those few who are still alive, what must they think watching the news — today, Saturday, August 12th. 2017?

What has happened to us? NAZIS ARE THE BAD GUYS!

I usually try to be funny with my posts.

I try to find the humor in the insanity that has become our reality. But not today. Maybe tomorrow.

Dissociative amnesia is also a possible explanation. You should consider in this regard that there have been already national-chauvinistic organizations (I mean real nazis) in the USA during the 30s of the last century. Your picture in this post is therefore not really complete. Take care and good luck!

That’s exactly what I thought. So, if I’m not losing my way, you are suggesting that we have a generation suffering from COLLECTIVE dissociative amnesia? I’m not ready to buy into that. I think we have a terribly IGNORANT generation who has never learned the stuff they need to know. They don’t remember it because they never knew it in the first place. You would have to assume all these people actually knew some history and have dissociatively forgotten it. I don’t think so. That’s a nice, doctorly way of saying something that I think is more accurately stupidity and ignorance.

Sometimes it is hard to view any TV or newspaper anymore, some wording makes it easier to have some distance. And ignorance is unfortunately an international disease, so may be you like my earlier post on it dealing in German prehistoric times with a hopeful end:

Nazis fled here escaping justice… this is old news. In-house terrorists are rearing their heads because of what is in office. The FBI needs to sweep up the streets. When one or more go public, s/he needs to be taken into custody on the spot. Good post! Nazis = Bad Guys! And that is what it is.

We watched Wonder Woman last night and it actually brought tears to my eyes. Yes. Sweep them up. Put them in summer camp and teach them the joys of making knots, finger painting, long swims in quiet lakes and learning to get along with other people. Because every once in a while, in the midst of the insane anger that periodically grips me, I realize you don’t end war with more and more violence. At some point, peace needs peace. But how? In this mess we are in, how do you get to anything like peace when violence is seeping up in waves from a blackened earth?

I think the endless mocking has helped. Nothing takes the wind out of a bully more than being ridiculed. Look at the “Crying Nazi” . He was all bluster until he got arrested. Now he’s angry that people refer to him as The Crying Nazi”. You just can’t make this crap up.